Loosening their notoriously anal retentive studio bent has yielded upbeat immediacy, an almost un-Dan-like brightness to jazzy funk and blues that snap and crackle--even if pop is obviously the farthest thing from their fevered brows.

Time has proven them wiser than their rock crit detractors: These seven songs abound in knotty plots, sneaky imagery, and drop-dead brilliant performances from a blue chip studio repertory studded with first-call jazz players epitomized by Wayne Shorter's towering solo on the title song.

A little more musically languorous perhaps, its trademark cynicism now undercut by hints of sadness and regret, this is nonetheless a Steely Dan album worthy of the name, and like the best of them, one whose subtle charms reveal themselves in surprising ways.

Pristine and sonically polished (three years and seven studios worth), time has served Gaucho well. Even its sense of laconic detachment now seems but a logical bridge to the two-decade removed Dan of Two Against Nature.

Pretzel Logic marked a transition for Steely Dan from a studio-bound rock band producing hits such as "Reeling in the Years" and "Do It Again" to a looser constellation of studio musicians under the direction of songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.

Songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen launched Steely Dan with a seductive, poker-faced 1972 debut as smoothly accessible in its music as it was elusive in its thematic concerns. There isn't a weak track here, astonishing, considering how much growth future Dan albums would display.

While retaining a solid rock foundation, the music finds Walter Becker and Donald Fagen engaging their jazz influences more successfully than ever; Fagen's piano fills alone are some of the most impressive music laid to tape in the '70s.

Though it didn't garner the radio attention of Aja, its more jazz-suffused, multiplatinum follow-up, Scam boasts a diverse, occasionally muscular musical rhetoric and some of the Dan's most telling portraits. Small wonder many Dan fans consider it their best.